Point: Social networking tools help capture the “quiet contributions” from the fringes of your company

Story: In the typical company, innovation relies on a hand-picked team leading an innovation project. The trouble is, these teams often have no good way of tapping the expertise of the whole company. They tend to call on the small circle of colleagues they know or on the acknowledged experts in an established field. But they have a hard time identifying people whom they don’t already know but who might have new knowledge relevant to the problem at hand. As a result, potential good ideas are lost or hidden.

That’s where social software tools come in handy. With a tool like InnovationSpigit, for example, a company can start a discussion on a topic and employees who know about the topic self-identify by posting ideas, refining the ideas of others, and voting on ideas.

For example, a company could start discussion like “Can we develop a new water filtration product?” People from market research might identify the top-selling filtration products and their value propositions (e.g., “BrandA removes chlorine and lead”).  Someone from HR, who recently bought a water filtration system for her family, might contribute her own insights gathered from what blogs and outside websites were saying about all the competing products (e.g., “BrandB sucks because it’s hard to install”). Unforeseen expertise & spark-generating ideas might come from an employee who’s studied marine animals who might suggest “have you looked at how fish gills work? Perhaps we could base an idea around that.” Other employees might point out the engineering deficits of a proposed technology (e.g., a potential filter material is too expensive for consumer water filters). Another person might have good suggestions for how to solve the cost problem (e.g., to coat the expensive filter ingredient on a cheaper material).

The point is that these contributions can come from anywhere, not just the hand-picked team members and their inner circle. Happenstance insights and contributions from non-obvious personnel help increase the volume and quality of ideas. Reputation systems and voting mechanisms, built into innovation-specific social applications like InnovationSpigit 2.0, help direct innovation efforts into the most productive directions.

Action

• Explore how innovation-specific social applications like InnovationSpigit can be used to improve innovation in your organization.
• Look for tools that expand the range of idea sources to more people and leverage the intelligence of crowds to focus innovation efforts.
• Create a vibrant set of communities around open-ended problems to get new and disruptive ideas.
• Use small incentives, reputation engines, and voting systems to encourage fast feedback that focuses efforts on the best ideas.
  

Point: Develop new products and services by applying innovative analytics to unused data.

Story: Three companies presenting at Techstars Demo Day last week illustrate a category of innovation that is based on new uses of data. First, Retel Technologies is a new company that helps retailers understand patterns of behavior at store locations. Many retailers have security cameras on site, but they rarely look at the data generated by those cameras because of the sheer volume of data. The raw data is typically viewed only in the event of a robbery. Retel, however, developed a cost-effective human-aided video data analysis service that extracts workplace performance analytics from all that unused video footage. For example, the system can help spot problems such as dirty tables at fast-food locations, employee theft, and capacity bottlenecks (such as a shortage of  cashiers during certain hours). Retel provides its clients monthly reports to help managers see trends, behaviors, and time-of-day patterns that can help them better manage their stores.

Second, a new company named Next Big Sound uses the realtime flow of events in social media to help band managers. The music industry is undergoing big changes, but sales of concert tickets are the highest they’ve been in ten years, and people are buying more music than ever. Giving band managers data can help them make better decisions. For example, real-time data from Twitter can be captured and analyzed to show who’s talking about which band and where they are — data that can provide great insight into a band’s fan base. Next Big Sound collects a host of both social media and web data to provide real-time marketing analytics that bands can use in variety of ways. For example, band managers can use the data to pinpoint the demographics of fans, scout new concert locations, and improve online ad placement. They can even suggest that a band mention people or events in the local area or give a shout-out to high-profile fans at a concert.

Third, Mailana is a company that uses communications analytics to help people leverage their social connections. These days, people are inundated by connections to other people. It’s not hard to have hundreds or thousands of connections in the form of entries in e-mail address books, friends on Facebook, colleagues on LinkedIn, and followers on Twitter. But who among the hoard of connections are the true trusted friends that one can really count on Mailana uses data on frequency and patterns of communication to automatically identify a person’s inner circle of most-trusted friends. Furthermore, Mailana helps people merge inner circles — a good trusted friend or a good trusted friend is far more valuable than a casual forgotten connection to another causal forgotten connection. Mailana helps people build and use the high-value core of their social graph.

In each of the three companies, innovative use of data provides new value.

Action:

• Inventory the data sources around you, your company, and industry
• Consider the potential analytic value of the data — what you might learn from that data? (or what might you learn more quickly?)
• Leverage low-cost computing and workflow technologies to extract new and actionable knowledge

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Point: Innovation can bring tremendous value to the problem of scarce resources.

Story: The World Health Organization reports that water scarcity affects one in three people on every continent, including areas that have plenty of rainfall. Access to clean drinking water or adequate amounts of water for farming and industrial use are at issue. Further research shows that by the year 2035, two-thirds of the world will have water shortages. In China, two-thirds of its 660 cities already face water issues today; by 2035, they will see severe water shortages.

The fact, however, is that the world has plenty of fresh water — 2 trillion liters per person. But, the resource is not well distributed. Worse, water quality matters as much as water quantity. Contaminated water creates problems for human consumers, agriculture, and high value marine ecosystems. Only uncontaminated water counts toward solving this crisis.

What can be done? Companies like IBM are harnessing IT to address the problem. One example is the SmartBay project in Ireland, which seeks to monitor water properties in Galway Bay to help manage commercial fishing & aquaculture. Networks of sensor buoys, tide gauges, wave riders and data analysis nodes provide up-to-date environmental information to monitoring agencies and the public. In a second example, IBM is applying its materials science research to create better desalination technology for producing purified water. In particular, the new filter material can remove more toxic metals than can the old technology. Third, IBM is leveraging is expertise in super computing to offer “Deep Thunder” for advanced weather predictions and simulations that could affect water supply or water reservoirs.

IBM’s efforts on water resources are part of a broader pattern and opportunity for innovators. The world has no shortage of scarcities. Applications, people, companies and even countries compete for water, energy, minerals, money, and attention. This means that innovators can create value by inventing clever means to improve the production, utilization, and productivity of each scarce resource.

Action:

To address the problem of any scarce resource:

• Collaborate with experts to understand the supply-side issues of a scarce resource.
• Survey resource users to understand demand-side patterns, value propositions, and capability gaps.
• Look for solutions that:

• *** maximize production of the scarce resource
• *** improve quality of the resource
• *** help connect supply with demand
• *** increase efficiency of use, prevent waste, or support recycling of the resource.